07.04.21
[Meme] Microsoft Will Fix Everything, Eventually…
The next version will fix everything, always
Summary: Microsoft wants you to know that the solution to all your problems is right around the corner; just stay with Windows…
08.31.19
Linux is Not Free/Libre If DRM is Adopted and Open Source is Meaningless in the Age of Openwashing
Welcome to ‘Linux Vista’ and Open-for-business Source (for some parts, for the openwashing factor)
Summary: Free/Open Source software (FOSS) and (GNU/)Linux don’t quite change the world as much as they’re being changed by monopolies (software, hardware and entertainment) to suit their agenda and eliminate any remnants of freedom
WHEN we say that Software Freedom is under attack we mean exactly that. We’re under attack; our rights and our dignity are under a heavy assault. We’re gradually losing control of everything digital. We become enslaved by technology, which rather than emancipate people devolves into a tool of oppression and imprisonment. Surveillance is one among many aspects of this.
“We become enslaved by technology, which rather than emancipate people devolves into a tool of oppression and imprisonment.”The harms of DRM are well documented, as are the effects of the DMCA. In the distant past (Windows Vista era) Microsoft colluded with hardware companies to put DRM in Windows and nowadays Google does the same to Linux (having already done the same to the WWW along with Microsoft and Neflix for the most part). It’s the evil DRM, not Direct Rendering (same acronym), which is mostly benign. According to this new post from Phoronix, AMD is doing the 'Intel thing' (which has done that with Vista/Microsoft and ChromeOS/Google). First the back doors (ME), now this…
To quote:
AMD developers have sent out their latest open-source Linux patches doing their kernel driver share for enabling High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) support for version 1.4 and newer.
While seeing HDCP support patches for open-source graphics drivers does irritate many in the community, similar to other open-source drivers supporting HDCP, this is only one part of the content protection puzzle. These patches alone do not impose any restrictions on users or other impairments, but mainly comes down to such proprietary software wanting to make use of HDCP capabilities on Linux. Open-source video players and the like can continue to enjoy GPU-based video acceleration uninterrupted.
[...]
Intel’s open-source Linux graphics driver only began seeing HDCP work relatively recently when Google engineers were interested with the Intel support in the context of Chromebook support.
All the news sites are still busy writing puff pieces about exFAT (at this stage we just skip these repetitive articles); no attention has been paid (or will be paid) to the issue above — an issue we investigated by analysing the kernel some months ago.
“The harms of DRM are well documented, as are the effects of the DMCA.”Make no mistake about it; Google surely spreads Linux, but at the same time it changes it in troubling ways. Yesterday/earlier today opensource.com promoted Google’s openwashing of its surveillance code — a subject that we covered in our previous Openwashing Report or two. To quote:
Developers at search engine giant Google have been busy on the open source front lately. In the last two weeks, they’ve released two very different systems as open source.
The first of those is the speech engine for Live Transcribe, a speech recognition and transcription tool for Android, which “uses machine learning algorithms to turn audio into real-time captions” on mobile devices. Google’s announcement states it is making Live Transcribe open source to “let any developer deliver captions for long-form conversations.”
Google is using this for surveillance, but we’re supposed to be all cheerful and gleeful because “open!”
“Red Hat’s opensource.com (above) actively participates in openwashing and Red Hat as a whole seem to have hired too many people from Microsoft, including managers.”We’ll do another Openwashing Report later this weekend. It’s a growing problem. It’s telling us that “open source” has “won”; what they mean by “won”, however, is co-opted by proprietary frameworks such as AWS, Azure, various spying devices that are dubbed “smart” and even totally meaningless mumbo-jumbo like "serverless". Some of our readers keep insisting that it’s time for the FSF to fight back.
Red Hat’s opensource.com (above) actively participates in openwashing and Red Hat as a whole seem to have hired too many people from Microsoft, including managers. It nearly sold itself to Microsoft and it promoted an Azure thing just before the weekend (we mentioned this in our daily links and it's not the first time).
What is going on? Have we lost sight of the fact that some companies strive to destroy Software Freedom?
“How long before we can call it “exterminate” or “extinguish”?”opensource.com has just published this article from Karl Fogel and James Vasile (we assume one of them is from Microsoft, but the bio was left empty). Microsoft executives — i.e. those who attack Open Source more than anyone — now try to hijack the narrative around its competition (speaking ‘for’ what it’s attacking). See paragraph 4: “Now we have a chance to have this discussion in a more regular and complete way: Microsoft has asked us to do a series of blog posts about open source, and the request was essentially “help organizations get better at open source” (not a direct quote, but a reasonable summary). They were very clear about the series being independent; they did not want editorial control and specifically did not want to be involved in any pre-approval before we publish a post. It goes without saying, but we’ll say it anyway, just so there’s no doubt, that the views we express in the series may or may not be shared by Microsoft.”
So a site called opensource.com is now being composed by/for Microsoft. How long before we can call it “exterminate” or “extinguish”? When will Microsoft ‘own’ Linux as much as it ‘owns’ the Linux Foundation? The Foundation has just outsourced some more projects to GitHub, i.e. to Microsoft. We put links about that in our daily roundup.
We’re being told that FOSS “won”; actually, software monopolies have “won” (read: dominate) FOSS. Who’s in control? █
03.26.16
Corporate Media Lies About ‘Market Share’ of Vista 10 the Same Way It Did About Vista
Both were terrible in terms of acceptance, so rigged statistics (biased by selection) come to Microsoft’s rescue and wrongly generalised/extrapolated!
Pro-Microsoft sites (the above is a Microsoft advocacy site) have a new ‘source’ to lean on, just like the Microsoft-connected Net Applications
Summary: New examples of Microsoft-leaning brainwash, telling us that Vista 10 is a “success”, just like “Microsoft loves Linux”
AS we noted here the other day, Vista 10 is now being compared to Vista (even in the corporate media). Both are massive failures that Microsoft prefers to forget about. Just look at the latest financial results; it’s chaotic. At the same time, Microsoft is desperate to convince the public to adopt (if not force the public to adopt, as in the case of Vista 10, through covert ‘updates’, not just secret OEM deals) based on the false perception that “everyone else is doing it!” and it’s “inevitable” (or something along those lines).
“Digital Analytics Program (DAP) is quite meaningless and not a proper indicator of market share (never mind if inside the US or outside of it).”Microsoft must be frustrated that people aren’t as gullible as Microsoft needs them to do. The ordinary people know that Vista 10 is terrible and many people actively avoid it by all means possible (even if that means not buying a new PC, or only buying a Chromebook or something along these lines). Microsoft’s ability to fool the public is surely eroding. The typical folks know they don’t need Windows anymore and they know that Microsoft cannot love FOSS. As Christine Hall has just put it: “As for Microsoft’s continuing open sourcing? There’s nothing new here, move on. When Redmond loves Linux and open source enough to quit suing open source projects over patents it claims it has — that will be news.”
We were rather disturbed to find this new IDG brainwash titled “Windows 10 passes 20% share in the U.S.”
“The title and the summary say very different things,” iophk wrote to us. “This reeks of desperation.” Did the editor at IDG choose this misleading lie? IDG equates “Digital Analytics Program” with “share in the U.S.” What next? Digital Analytics Program (DAP) is quite meaningless and not a proper indicator of market share (never mind if inside the US or outside of it).
“Don’t be so shocked that DAP is Microsoft Windows-powered and even distributes MS Word files (rather than ODF or PDF).”“For the first time,” says this article, “Windows 10 accounted for more than one-fifth of the visits to sites tracked by the Digital Analytics Program (DAP), which mines traffic to more than 4,000 websites on over 400 different domains maintained by U.S. government agencies, such as the Internal Revenue Service and the National Weather Service.”
Don’t be so shocked that DAP is Microsoft Windows-powered and even distributes MS Word files (rather than ODF or PDF). Something doesn’t smell right. DAP has been used to disseminate other pro-Microsoft talking points at IDG (same writer). A lot of government employees are simply forced to use Windows and are not given a choice of browser, version, etc.
Next up: let’s judge the market share of GNU/Linux in the US based on universities’ research departments. █
04.18.13
Windows is Dying, Say Pundits, Which is Why Microsoft Tries to Make GNU/Linux Hard to Install and Run
Survival instincts?
Summary: In addition to filing an antitrust complaint against Android, Microsoft is committing antitrust sins when forcing OEMs to make hardware Microsoft-dominated
The Vista series, starting with Windows Vista, has been crushing the Windows franchise. Microsoft repeatedly extended the life of XP, now a 12-year-old system, in order to keep GNU/Linux at bay (Microsoft also used corrupt business practices to achieve this).
The other day we saw Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols saying that Windows is pretty much finished. To quote:
Windows: It’s over
You can think Windows 8 will evolve into something better, but the numbers show that Windows is coming to a dead end.
Vista 8 is indeed a dead end as Microsoft already leaps to vapurware, or imaginary replacements. ZDNet has this piece titled “What really signed the PC’s death warrant? Microsoft’s decision to support netbooks” (to keep GNU/Linux down).
“Some of the reasons for the collapse of the the PC market go a lot further back than the reception of Windows 8,” argues the author. By bribing to keep GNU/Linux out of netbooks Microsoft devalued Windows, which had already seen its value deflating after Vista came out.
There is a shameless attempt at spin, blaming hardware rather than software and given that Microsoft’s hardware is rejected as much as its software, this distraction does not hold water. We covered this before with examples.
One reader of ours asked: “Which real reviewer actually praised Microsoft Surface?
“It’s DOA like Vista 8 is.”
Indeed.
The Microsoft boosters too acknowledge Microsoft’s defeat, but their new strategy is to just discredit the opposition, as we shall show in a later post. Here is what the booster says:
The tablet market will grow this year by 38% to 150 million units, but Microsoft won’t be a beneficiary, says a new report from ABI Research. Windows tablets, BlackBerry tablets and “unidentified OS implementations” currently make up only 3% of the total market, and don’t show signs of significant growth.
The ABI Research report says that an estimated 150 million tablets will ship in 2013, worth an estimated $64 billion. The total number of tablets will grow by a projected 38% over 2012, and the total revenue will grow a projected 28%.
Realising that Linux is unstoppable and the demise of Windows to minority userbase imminent, Microsoft filed an antitrust complaint through a proxy. ECT has an analysis of it here. The overview says “Microsoft has “tried forcing people to license Android from them to try to kill Android, and they’ve tried putting out their own mobile OS to try to kill Android,” said blogger Mike Stone. “Both initiatives have failed on every level. People are still buying Android devices as fast as they can be made. All that’s left is to follow in Apple’s footsteps and sue sue sue. It stinks of desperation.””
“Other people may turn to Windows in such a scenario.”Well, the latest antitrust violation is Microsoft’s, which according to yet more articles like this one is suppressing GNU/Linux adoption.
It is about UEFI restricted boot. “UEFI BIOS and Secure Boot work perfectly well with only Linux installed according to the experiments I have conducted on my own PC,” writes Jamie Watson this week. It has become complicated due to Microsoft’s dirty trick. Yesterday after an in-place distro upgrade I had to resolve a GRUB issue before I could boot again, so I know the feeling of discouragement through complexity, I nearly gave up and installed everything from scratch. Other people may turn to Windows in such a scenario. Some might simply stay with it, no matter how fed up they are. This is Microsoft’s last hope. █
01.23.13
The Register on Vista 8
Summary: Articles of interest about a fatal incarnation of Vista, which simply cannot keep up with Android and other Linux-based operating systems
The release of Vista 8 has been such a disaster because the software is widely loathed. It’s a technical failure, not a marketing failure (over a billion dollars were spent on marketing). Some Windows shops now make money from the service of downgrading back to Vista 7 or XP. This is Vista all over again. I tried both, so I would know. It doesn’t shock me that the man behind Vista 8 already got sacked. Rather than give Vista 8 away Microsoft is raising the price now:
Say what you will about Windows 8; at least the upgrade from Windows 7 is cheap. Or it is for now. After January 31 will be a different story.
Ever since Windows 8′s October 26, 2012 launch, Microsoft has been offering retail Windows 8 Pro upgrade DVDs for $69.99. Online upgrades have been even cheaper, at $39.99. And customers who bought new PCs or laptops with Windows 7 preloaded got the best deal of all: If they registered with Microsoft, the online Windows 8 upgrade cost them just $14.99.
By raising the price Microsoft can discourage usage of this total disaster. Vista 8 RT is also a disaster. The Register writes
Microsoft’s ARM blunder: 7 reasons why Windows RT was DOA
Industry doomsayers were circling Windows 8 like buzzards before it even launched, but they picked the wrong carcass. Microsoft’s real 2012 roadkill was Win8′s ARM-powered cousin, Windows RT.
The chattering class’s comparisons of Windows 8 and Windows Vista are premature – it will take several more quarters before we can gauge how Redmond’s latest OS will play out in the marketplace. But with the holiday season behind us, it’s now plain that Window RT is a flop.
A Microsoft booster in the same publication writes that Microsoft is concerned about jailbreaking of this OS.The daily news in this site are getting more political because Linux already sells and spreads more quickly than Windows, thanks to Android and advanced in hardware. Now we must worry about freedom and rights. This includes jailbreaking. █
01.06.13
Vista 8 Worse Than Vista, So Microsoft Must Block Competition to Save Windows
Summary: More UEFI stories and some numbers which show even Vista outpacing Vista 8 in terms of adoption
WE are looking for more UEFI stories as part of an attempt to show how anticompetitive it really is.
Jamie Watson, a Brit, experienced yet more problems when he tested distributions on new hardware which is improperly marked:
I’ve been trying to set up multi-booting with Windows 8 and Linux – with limited success.
[...]
I have a difficult time even finding out from the pre-sales technical information if a system has EFI boot or not, much less whether it is configurable or not.
Here is another new story about UEFI issues. It sure looks like Microsoft is eager to prevent Linux and GNU from gaining ground by persuading hardware makers to restrict what can be booted. There is no denying the fact that Vista 8 is a failure, worse even than Vista based on some new numbers that are charted here:
Windows 8 usage uptake has slipped behind Vista’s in the same point in its release. Windows 8 online usage share is around 1.6% of all Windows PC’s which is less than the 2.2% share that Windows Vista commanded at the same two month mark after release.
The source of this data is moreover close to Microsoft (and partly funded by it). We wrote about it in:
- Summary: Lies, Damn Lies and Net Applications (Fake ‘Statistics’)
- Is Net Applications One Order of Magnitude Off Target?
- Microsoft and Apple Pay Net Applications (Hitslink)
- Net Applications Has Former Microsoft Employee, Also a Microsoft Investor?
- Net Applications: The Mathematics Failing
When even a Microsoft booster is saying negative things about Vista 8 adoption, then you know if might even be worse than claimed and reported. But what seems to be under-reported is the degree to which Microsoft is screwing with GNU/Linux installations. That needs to change. █
“We all know Linux is great… it does infinite loops in 5 seconds.” -Linus Torvalds about the superiority of Linux on the Amterdam Linux Symposium
08.25.12
Vista 8 is Worse Spyware Than Predecessors
Summary: Antifeatures that are associated with spying have been included in Vista 8, raising concerns for those who need protection in their private lives
THERE are many reasons to believe that Vista 8 will fail just like its predecessors (after XP).
Vista was not just horrible but it also introduced massive violations of privacy, which ought to deter and scare businesses. Having Vista or later installed is like having Stalin on your hard-drive. It ‘phones home’ a lot, gathering information about the users. This information is stored remotely and indefinitely.
“It ‘phones home’ a lot, gathering information about the users.”Now we learn that Vista 8 goes much further than Vista. It uses insecure means to help Microsoft spy on the users’ activity. To quote: “There are a few serious problems here. The big problem is that Windows 8 is configured to immediately tell Microsoft about every app you download and install. This is a very serious privacy problem, specifically because Microsoft is the central point of authority and data collection/retention here and therefore becomes vulnerable to being served judicial subpoenas or National Security Letters intended to monitor targeted users. This situation is exacerbated when Windows 8 is deployed in countries experiencing political turmoil or repressive political situations.”
See what Microsoft did in Russia. Remember the sound bite: Stalin on your hard-drive. █
“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
–George Santayana
08.23.12
Vista 8 Will Fail for Businesses, Says Dell
Summary: After very poor adoption of Vista and Vista 7 (especially in businesses) it is expected that Vista 8 will bring more of the same
THE failure of Vista 8 is foreseen by many. It is profound enough for OEMs to complain about it already [1, 2] and Dell joins the antagonists by making its stance known.”In the earnings call to discuss its latest financial results,” says The Register, “Dell’s CFO Brian Gladden said the introduction of Windows 8 in October would have a limited effect on Dell’s results at first, since the company is really focusing on enterprise systems, and he expects the new OS to have limited appeal early on in that sector.”
“Our guess is that Linux, the kernel, which is common to all these platforms, will thrive on desktops just as it does on phones, servers, and increasingly tablets too.”The interface of Vista 8 makes it unsuitable for serious use. To quote another new article: “Though Windows 8 is winning rave reviews for its touch-friendly tablet experience, many feel that the operating system’s “Modern-style” UI makes life more difficult for PC users. Count usability expert Raluca Budiu of the Nielsen Norman Group among these critics. Though she has not conducted any formal studies on Windows 8, the former Xerox PARC researcher and user experience specialist has used the new OS enough to conclude that, for productivity tasks on the PC at least, Windows 8 is less user friendly than its predecessors.”
GNU/Linux is alive and well, but Android too is looking for growth at the expense of Windows while Chrome OS gains a more favourable position among OEMs. Our guess is that Linux, the kernel, which is common to all these platforms, will thrive on desktops just as it does on phones, servers, and increasingly tablets too. █
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